Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Chicken Cutlets
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Remove the skin from the chicken breasts and flatten them with a chopper dipped in water.
Trim the chicken neatly and sprinkle with salt.
Pass a chicken bone through each cutlet to form a shank before cooking.
Coat and fry
Dip the chicken in beaten eggs and coat with bread crumbs.
Fry in butter until golden brown.
Serve
Serve with truffle or mushroom sauce.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.
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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Butter + truffletop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,209 recipes
Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
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Chicken + truffletop 13% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together756 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
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Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,258 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Chicken
- Provides the lean meat that is flattened and fried into the cutlet.
- Eggs
- Bind the bread crumbs to the chicken so the coating stays attached while frying.
- Bread crumbs
- Form a crisp, golden coating that browns in the hot butter.
- Butter
- Conducts heat for frying and adds richness and browning to the crust.
The step that matters
Dip in eggs and coat with bread crumbs. If the egg layer is thin or uneven, the crumbs will not stick evenly and may fall off during frying, leaving bare patches that brown unevenly.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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